7/28/26 Bargaining Session: Discussion of 8 Articles

We made progress towards a new contract at the July 28 bargaining session with the University. You can read the notes from the session here. We came prepared to tentatively agree to one proposal, drop an article, and provide counters on four articles. The University brought counters to three articles, but did not make meaningful movement towards the Union’s position on Tax Assistance, and Non-Discrimination and Harassment. On Union Activity/Access, the University moved towards the Union’s position on having improved access to orientations and agreed to provide the Union with all worker-related information it is requesting. Two small but significant wins.

Working through the Eight Articles Discussed:

Copies of these articles can be found in the Bargaining Proposal Tracker.

• Transitional Funding

  • The Union tentatively agreed to the University’s proposal to continue the current Transitional Funding side letter in the existing contract to the new one.

• Obligations Under International Law

  • The Union withdrew this proposal.

  • The Union recognizes the importance that internationalist demands have carried for membership. However, after seeking input from members through working groups and GBM votes, we have determined at this time that withdrawal is strategic in terms of our broader contract campaign and was a necessary step on the way to winning a fair contract that includes a living wage, expanded benefits, and protections for non-citizen students. 

• Union Activity/Access

  • Both the Union and University passed counters on this article during this session. Compared to the previous contract, the Union now has more access to orientations in-between semesters. At the end of the session, the remaining points of disagreement are:

    • The Union wants to be able to book rooms on campus for meetings

    • The Union would like at least 20 minutes allotted to a Union presentation during orientations, similar to what the postdoc union (UAW 4100) get, and would like to have our presentations scheduled at least three weeks in advance.

    • The Union would like access to bulletin boards on campus, similar to what the staff union (UAW 2110) get

    • The University is asking for additional time to provide the Union with worker information

• Non-Discrimination and Harassment

  • The University provided a counter on this article that came slightly closer to the Union’s proposal by reducing the number of days required to request a status report on an investigation to 55 days from 60 and accepting the inclusion of the University’s internal definition of bullying in the contract.

  • However, the University’s counter also removed entire sections on Caregiver/Parental Accommodations (i.e. lactation rooms), disability rights, personal information, gender neutral bathrooms, and maintaining confidentiality of complainants and respondents in investigations. 

• Tax Assistance 

  • The University presented a counter on Tax Assistance that removes their obligation to maintain a list of accountants that student employees would be able to reference to assist with tax services for their situation. They claim that vetting the quality of individual accountants would be too difficult to do, despite the fact that they maintain similar lists for immigration lawyers.

  • Other student worker unions, including at MIT and Northwestern, guarantee such referral lists in their contracts. We see no reason Columbia cannot do the same and believe this is a more than reasonable proposal to support international student employees.

• Leaves of Absence

  • The Union provided a self-counter on this article that moved us in line with what was offered to UAW 4100 (the Columbia Postdocs) by asking for up to five days off (down from 14 days) with pay for travel required to maintain immigration status necessary for continuing their program at the University. 

  • The University argued that the distinction between student visas (for PhD Students) and worker visas (for Postdocs) make our proposed counter different from what was offered to UAW 4100, but said they would get back to us at a later time.

• Health and Safety

  • The Union self-countered on this article by accepting the language from the University’s previous counter on requesting additional meetings and removing several sections from the previous proposal. 

  • We maintained the need to be able to discuss issues of workplace violence and law enforcement presence at the Health and Safety Committee. We also maintained the need to remove security checkpoints at access points that impede student employees from accessing work duties and benefits such as healthcare. Lastly, we continue to maintain that the University shall not issue agents with lethal equipment to respond to protected activities (Union-related or otherwise).

  • The University has expressed that they will not engage with the latter two demands.

• Surveillance 

  • The Union provided a self-counter on this article which narrowed the scope of surveillance to specifically student employees, their work activities, and their workplace. We removed several sections from the previous version and retained two key issues: our right to be notified of surveillance (and any changes to surveillance) used to monitor student employees during work duties and at their place of work and our right to review surveillance technology at any time and request recorded footage from cameras.

  • The University acknowledged that this is now a mandatory subject of bargaining, but voiced concerns that the definition is still imprecise and maintained that they will not agree to the proposals in this article.